Learn Digital Camera Basics for Nature Photography

If you’re just starting our on your nature photography journey, let’s start with digital camera basics. In film photography, tiny particles of a chemical called silver halide are embedded in the film on an emulsion. They turn colour when exposed to light. So your final film image is made up of very fine specks of this silver stuff. (Good thing you love chemistry right!?)

Instead of film, images in a digital camera are captured on an electronic sensor – the CCD, which is short for charge coupled device. The CCD is contains light sensitive elements (pixels) that capture your image and store it on a memory card or “digital film” as some people call it.

The sensor is responsible for two very important aspects of your final photograph – the angle of view and the size of your final image.

Typical digital camera sensors are smaller than 35mm film, so HOW you see your image through the lens or viewfinder will NOT be the same as with a 35 mm camera. The area of coverage in your photo will be different than with a 35 mm camera, and because the sensor is smaller in a digital camera, your image may not be as crisp when you enlarge it to an equivalent 35 mm size.

However, newer, more expensive digital cameras do have 35mm equivalent sensors. These are known as full frame cameras. The smaller sensor cameras are knows a “crop sensor cameras” or APS-C (Advanced Photo System Type-C).  Nikon refers to its crop sensor cameras a DX, and the full-frame modes as FX.

So you can now understand how critical a part of the digital camera the sensor can be!

Easy as pie, right? Right!

NEXT UP: Basic DSLR photography Part 2: Resolution and Megapixels

Basic DSLR photography Part 3:The meaning of Megapixels: Resolution Explained